


time is the longest distance

by hellabaloo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Statement Fic, Time Travel, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 16:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17145512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellabaloo/pseuds/hellabaloo
Summary: “For the record, I’m only here as a last resort.”“Understood. Statement of Timothy Stoker regarding—”“Regarding my death. And fucking dimension...space-time travel. Or something.”“Statement of Timothy Stoker regarding his death and apparent time travel. Gertrude Robinson recording.”





	time is the longest distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



> Hapyy Yuletide!! I totally fell in love with your "Tim presses the button in the wax museum and wakes up in his old apartment with Danny sprawled out on his couch" prompt and really wanted to write you a treat :)
> 
> Title from The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, "Time is the longest distance between two places."

 

 

.

 

“Are you sure you want this recorded?”

Tim had never met Gertrude Robinson before her death in his—well, _before_ —but the look she gave him over the rim of her glasses forcibly reminded him suddenly and so clearly of Jon about to pull someone’s secrets out of them, willing or not, that he nearly stood up and left the Archivist’s office right then. Giving his statement once had been bad enough.

And yet. 

He stayed in the chair, waiting for the Archivist.

Tim wasn’t surprised that he’d wound up at the Magnus Institute, as much as he disliked the idea of giving a statement. Of somehow helping Beholding and Elias, or whoever was in charge.

He shrugged, feigning more nonchalance than he felt. “Right. Big eye in the sky needs to be fed, I guess. You’re the Archivist.”

Still Gertrude said nothing. She reached out a hand gnarled with age and clicked on the tape recorder. Hearing the quiet _snick_ of the recorder starting and the gentle whir of the running tape still made him angry, apparently.

“Statement of Timothy Stoker—” she started, but Tim interrupted

“For the record, I’m only here as a last resort,” he said.

There was another appraising look before she nodded, once—just a small incline of her head. “Understood. Statement of Timothy Stoker regarding...” she trailed off and looked at Tim expectantly. 

He sighed. “Regarding my death. And fucking dimension...space-time travel. Or something.”

“Statement of Timothy Stoker regarding his death and apparent time travel. Gertrude Robinson recording. Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Stoker.”

Tim didn’t want to start. Not really. He focused his eyes on the desk between them, running his finger nail along its sharp edge. But then the words were coming out his mouth in spite of himself.

“I guess it started with me blowing the explosives. Well. No, not really. It started with the Unknowing.”

Tim glanced up to gauge Gertrude’s reaction. She was still watching him intently, her eyes narrowed. She didn’t say anything—simply waited for him to continue.

“ _Before_ , I had worked as an archival assistant, a researcher, to Jon—Jonathan Sims—my, uh, the Archivist from my time. He was trying to stop the Unknowing and knew where it was going to happen. The plan was to rig the place with explosives, wait for the right moment, and blow everything to hell. Simple, right?”

He took a breath and then remembered something. “Thanks by the way. We got the explosives from your storage unit.”

Gertrude’s surprised start was gratifying, but she still didn’t say anything.

“When it started, the Unknown I mean, nothing was. Right.”

Tim exhaled trying to sift through the images and false images, but not really wanting to remember anything that had to with that awful experience. It had been bad enough the first time around.

“Look. I don’t think I could properly describe it. We thought we were being so careful. That they wouldn’t know we were coming, but they did. And of course they tried to stop us. Even through all the,” Tim paused and waved his hands, _not-rightness_ he wanted to say, despite how ridiculous it sounded, before continuing, vaguely, “everything, I still had the detonator. You have to understand, I hated the circus so much. I hated everyone, even Jon, so much. It’s the one thing I held onto. The one thing I can clearly remember. It’s not like I had a death wish, okay, but I just didn’t care, I guess. And I wanted some sort of satisfaction. So, I blew us all up.”

Tim sucked in a breath, his stomach having abruptly fallen to somewhere around his feet. Something about saying those words made this all so much more real. Even after everything.

“There’s no way I could have lived. Maybe Jon did. I’m not sure about the others. But I wasn’t dead. Or I’m not dead. It was 2017. And now it’s 2013 and my brother Danny is still alive.” 

He cracked a smile at Gertrude that probably looked more like a grimace. Apparently, the second time you gave a statement, the easier it got. “You see, I started working at the Magnus Institute because the circus took my brother. He wandered into the old Covenant Garden Theater under the Royal Opera House—he was into urban exploration—and found something. They took his _skin_ for one of their dancers.” 

Tim spat the last word out in disgust.

“They took him and I wanted to know everything I could about them. About Robert Smirke's buildings. To get revenge, eventually, I suppose. And that led me here. I’m not sure I got what I wanted in the end though.”

Here, Tim paused, his shoulders slumping. He really did have shit luck. Or maybe he was just stuck in a cruel sort of hell.

“It doesn’t make any sense. One moment I blow myself up, the next I’m waking up in my flat, and he’s there. Just sleeping. Peaceful. All sprawled out like he normally sleeps, and you think that can't be comfortable, but Danny always ended up like that. And he was alive,” Tim said quietly, thinking back to the sheer joy and simple relief he’d felt on seeing his little brother again. 

Tim had rushed forward to hug him—he must have woken his brother because Danny was blinking the sleep from his eyes and his hair was sticking up in odd places and Tim had never been so happy to see him in his life—but stopped dead in his tracks when a terrible thought whispered in the back of his head: this can’t be real.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” he confessed in a quiet voice. “I thought it was a trick of theirs. I started yelling at him, all sorts of horrible things. How dare they take his face. Danny was dead. That whatever _thing_ he was, he was not my brother.”

Tim could feel his throat close and chest tighten as tears threatened to fall. He coughed and exhaled a rattling breath before continuing.

“‘You’re scaring me, Tim,’ Danny said at one point. He kept trying to prove he was real, that this was all real, that he was still my brother, but I. I wouldn’t listen. Eventually, he said he had to clear his head and then. Then he was gone. By the time I had figured out that this was, is, 2013, and not. Not somewhere else, not a sick joke, or not that I’m still stuck in the Unknowing, it was too late. He won’t take my calls. That was two months ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”

Tim scrubbed at his face, the scratch of stubble refreshing sharp against his palm reassuring in an odd way. Grounding.

"For _years_ , all I wanted was my brother back. I dreamt of what I'd do if I could go back, stop him from ever going near the Covenant Garden Theater, convince him that he should find something other than urban exploration to fill his time. And then I had it."

He laughed, a sharp bark of a sound. "I had it. And then I lost it. I suppose I should be grateful that Danny's alive. At least I think he his. Wherever he is. But the longer I go without seeing him, the more I think I really am stuck somewhere between alive and dead. Caught in the Unknowing."

Looking up at Gertrude, Tim could see she wasn't really focused on him anymore. There was something calculating in her stare that made Tim suppress a shudder.

“I don’t really even know why I’m here. I’ve been on the other side of this, it’s not like I think you can do anything. Take my information, try and do follow-up interviews, try to make sense of it. But then what. Even if you can find Danny, I'm not expecting he'd be willing to talk to me after the things I said.”

“You said you came here as a last resort,” Gertrude said, refocusing on Tim who shrugged. 

"I don't know how any of this works. I don't really give a fuck about the powers and their avatars or whatever. But if I blew my one chance to go back in time and have everything be perfect, to have Danny back, I might as well do something worthwhile if I'm here. Even if I hate your boss."

Tim laughed again. It sounded hollow and joyless to his own ears. “And, I guess, because apparently even in a world where I don’t work here, or maybe it’s 'I don’t work here _yet_ ,' there’s something tying me to this place. Or maybe it’s really is just my shit luck.”

Gertrude seemed to weigh his last statement before nodding once. She reached out a hand for Tim to shake, and after a moment's reluctance, he did. 

"Thank you for your statement, Mr. Stoker. I'm sure I'll be in touch."

"I don't know if I'm going to be around for any more statements. I got stuck here once, and I really don't want to get stuck here again."

“Where will you go?”

“I’m not sure,” Tim said, standing. “Away from here.”

 

 

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End file.
